Hi guys,My name is Ike and I have been married for 7 years now. My wife found out about my CSA in 2008. During that time, I had a one night stand with a guy and she found out about my porn addiction to gay porn. I have been in therapy since 2009. I am a leader in my Celebrate Recovery sexual group. I have been sober for almost three years now. However, I have been struggling for the past few weeks. About two weeks ago I had a dream about my CSA and we was having sex. The dream was very sexual and I wound up having a wet dream from it. Every since that dream I have been stuggling and having other dreams/fantasy about childhood friends who I have never been with. I feel really bad because I don't understand why these dreams are so strong. My wife is very supportative but I feel like I am living a lie sometimes. I feel like I don't know who I am and feel like I am pretending to be straight. I am at a point where I don't even feel like having sex at all. sometimes I feel like just running away and she would be so happy without me. However I have a 5 year old daughter and a 14 yearold son with her. My son is actually my stepson. I am taking medication for depression wellburtin (sp?). I don't know what to do. I am in a depress state and feels like my wife deserve somebody better than me. She is my best friend. I don't know what's going on guys. Thanks for listening to me.

Thanks for speaking up about what you are facing right now. Many of us have been right there with you. CSA leaves often us with confused feelings about our sexuality, and being prone to acting out in various ways.

I am a straight married guy who sometimes feels same sex attraction, sometimes has bizzare sexual dreams and fantasies, and has also acted out in ways that I am ashamed of. I have learned that all guys have all kinds of sexual dreams and fantasies. We don't have to act on them. They're not real, they're just dreams and fantasies. Try not to sweat it to much.

What IS real is that wife who loves and supports you through it all, and those kids who depend on you to be their Dad, and they are lucky to have you.

Jude

_________________________
I will remember youWill you remember me?Don't let your life pass you byWeep not for the memoriesSarah McLachlan

Hello Ike. I am certainly no stranger to sexual dreams, thoughts and fantasies that I wish I did not have. Like Jude said, try not to be to hard on yourself over dreams which you can not control. You are a human and therefore are a highly sexual being. When we have pent up sexual desires and unresolved sexual emotions, sometimes those are going to come out in the form of dreams. It's just your mind and body's way of releasing some of the pressure, like the steam coming out of a pressure cooker. Please don't beat yourself up over it.

The only thing I think you can do is to be open and honest with your wife about everything. Perhaps if you aren't already, you could attend some counseling with her. Other than that, the only thing you can do is to keep reaching out to us and to others and keep as many support structures around you as possible. That may not "cure" your unwanted sexual thoughts and desires but it can help you to deal with them and help you get through. It's ok, and you can do it. You need to, for your wife and kids sake, as well as for your own. I'm rooting for you. Take care. Peace,

Every once in a while I come across such powerful emotional honesty that I feel challenged to share at the same level. Yours is one such post. I really respect your honesty and candor about what is an incredibly sensitive and seemingly self-indicting issue. And for each of us who dares to talk about this, I suspect there are scores of others who remain silent.

Like Joseph Conrad's Kurtz in Heart of Darkness (many are more familiar with the reprised story in the movie Apocalypse Now), horror became a friend. It had to, because if not a friend, it was an enemy to be feared. So many of us had to make friends with what we were unequipped to say no to. Think about it. The recent Penn State scandal involving Jerry Sandusky spoke volumes - because the indignant masses who were screaming for Jerry's head - and who were hooting and hollering like tailgaters at a Saints game when he was convicted - did not include the victims who testified and put him there. They had to be dragged out of the woodwork one by one just to testify. They were the ones who put him away. But they were not the ones reveling and cheering on the courtroom steps that night. It's easy to see the horror when one is not immersed in it. What a paradox that the loudest voices often have no clue, and the quietest whispers keep the truest secrets locked in their soul. When my perp was caught, I was so quiet that no one noticed me at all...

I don't know your story, but perhaps you can find a connection that makes sense in mine (click the rabbit in my signature below). I was a nascent pre-adolescent boy, and he was the older "big brother" friend who was telling me everything from how to date girls to explaining why I didn't have hair on my legs. And this is just how it happens so many times. As such hapless victims - at least true with me - we did not know what sex was about, and so how were we to defend ourselves? While I found girls pretty and delightfully tantalizing, my trusted mentor decided to teach me everything about them in his own selfish and twisted way. I was just a kid, lacked the vocabulary to say no to him, and that was how I learned. Period. Does that make me gay, a despicable dirty little kid with secrets and shame so deep I stayed away from getting too close to anyone in case they might see the invisible elephant on my back? If that's what it felt like to be a girl, could I ever be a man to any woman? For years - secrets, shame, sexual confusion and ultimately surrender to it all.

It was only in looking deeply at the past that I even began to understand who I was. Therapy is not a magical cure. It's not a transforming paradigm. It is merely a journey one takes to meet the child they were, to reconcile their feelings with him. And for me, it was an opportunity to take a deep look at that dirty little kid and find the hero in him. He was just a scrappy little boy who did the best he could do in an unspeakable world of grown-up-sized problems few adults would have fared better with, even if they had decided to look closer.

The question, Ike, is not about casting away the feelings you had to learn, the sexuality you had to embrace and grow with. Just me perhaps, but it's not about denying or redefining the deepest desires you have as if they somehow are not valid. The question is way deeper than that - it is accepting who you had to become to survive.

The first forgiveness you learn is the one you give to yourself. Sometimes that forgiveness sweeps over you so strongly that you can even forgive the adults who should have protected you, the people who could have helped but did not, and even, perhaps, your abuser. There are no wrongs and rights here - just discovering what your heart tells you. But it is that first forgiveness that is key.

The way I see it, yes - you had a one-night stand with a guy, and trespassed yet more boundaries of your relationship with gay porn. There is a huge submerged scaffold beneath those events that is the real issue so few know how to look at, and many more won't even dare to look at. Decorum, self-reproach and redress to the tenets of fidelity are admirable and appropriate, but ultimately superficial in the sense that they never touch the deeper, essential motivations underlying it all. Think iceberg, think Titanic. What sank it was what was not seen.

There was a pear tree across the street from us. It did not grow straight like the others, but instead leaned out away from the shadows to drink in the sun. And that's how it grew. But it wasn't like the others, and they cut it down - replaced it with an adult tree that was straight. Tears still sting my eyes when I think of that, because I was that tree. I became who I had to become. So did you, Ike. How many of us try so desperately to live our lives for the palatability of others as if our deeper selves held lesser integral worth?

We did not have a choice. We had to learn to accommodate the desires of those who had more power than we did. I suspect that your dreams are leaking to the surface some powerful truths. When you take the journey (and perhaps you have), meet yourself on the deepest level, and bring him back into your heart, you'll know what I am talking about.

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